


Dreams and Diamonds

by codedredalert



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Discussion of Death, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:19:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codedredalert/pseuds/codedredalert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That time Dave Strider fell into a moirallegiance with Karkat Vantas and found it actually kind of nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams and Diamonds

**Author's Note:**

> My working title for this was literally "Pale meteor davekat".

 

Speeding through space makes you lose track of time.

Unless, of course, you are the time guy.

You _are_ the time guy so you know it’s exactly 0516 hours in Houston, Texas, which is a place that doesn’t exist anymore. Being the time guy, you are uniquely qualified to declare it ungodly hour to be awake.

Unfortunately, your Bro took anime training montages as lifestyle guides and you have a body clock like the Greenwich Royal Observatory, so here you are, awake.

Even more unfortunately, everyone keeps odd hours. Jesus, it’s like living in a frat house full of constantly hungover dudes. You have no idea who you can go commiserate with.

Alright, that isn’t quite true.

Karkat avoids sleep like a fourteenth century Englishman tries to avoid the plague. He’s completely fucking terrified of catching a bit of sicknasty shut-eye. He’s awake approximately ninety-nine point nine per cent of the time.

And of course he’s asleep, drooling pink over his keyboard.

“Hey,” you say.

It has absolutely zero effect.

“Hey,” you repeat.

You absolutely do not feel guilt that you’re waking him up when he gets so little sleep anyway. Nope, you’re having the antithesis of a guilt party.

Karkat scowls even in his sleep, twitching like he is going to have a fucking aneurism any moment. (When Bro said your face gets stuck if you keep frowning, he spoke the goddamned gospel truth.)

His left hand is even on the keyboard, typing nonsense letters to whichever poor soul he was mentally-virtually yelling at.

It read something like “j                                   kmsfsf   jl,777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777;   s;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;segsescfvavfdbasssddddddsafwevc”.

Huh. So either he didn’t use capslock or he managed to hit it before the symphony of Karkat-face and unconscious-left-hand began.

Karkat whimpers.

His left-hand claws dig into his keyboard, popping out the jagged symbols that on a normal keyboard were “A”, “W”, “E” and “F”. He gauges four lines into the metal table on his right, deep, stuttering screeches.

His breathing is shallow and rapid.

“Rrrrngh!”

“Hey. _Karkat_.” You shake his shoulder.

He goes for you claws and fangs out, screaming murder in alienese.

(Karkat’s teeth are hella pointy when you’re only an inch away.)

You make to flashstep the fuck outta there. He headbutts your _face_.

Your aviators go flying.

Eyes squeezed shut you step into his guard, catch him in the hollow of his shoulder socket with your elbow and blindly grab a handful of hair. Somewhere in there is a tiny horn.

You shake him, once.

“Messing with the shades is not cool, bro,” your voice is a little harsher than you intended. There’s a wet trickle on your lip and chin and your cheekbone tender in the familiar ‘going to be bruised tomorrow’ way.

Karkat’s crazy intense snarl lowers into a growl.

“Hey, snap out of it,” you swat the side of his head with your other hand. Wow, because that wasn’t a stupid idea or anything. Bitchslap the crazy, angry alien which has pointy nails and pointy teeth. It’s not like you could get your throat bitten out or anything at this range. You should do it twice for good measure.

Karkat’s eyes stop looking through you and his eyebrows scrunch together with one side a little quirked.

“Dave?” he asks.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out. Or say that you don’t know it because fuck you it’s been two years and six months, you heartless cad. I can go into specifics, don’t make me go into specifics.”

He snorts and you let go of your hold on his hair.

“The first thing I saw when I woke up was your lusus-white face, of course I’m going to think I’m still in a dayterror. Who even wakes a sleeping troll? Only a complete pan-rotten fuckass, that’s who.”

“Oh, why, thank you Sir Strider for rescuing me, princess kawaii-sparkle Karkat, from my damsel-ly distress of having a pea under my dreambubble mattress tower of Babel, you’re my hero, how did I ever get by without you? _Swoon_.”

Karkat’s eye twitches.

“What the fuck was that liquefied corpse of a sentence even supposed to mean?” he explodes, throwing his hands up. “Are those even intelligible sentences coming out of your facegash?”

You casually walk over and pick up your shades.

“That was a replay of what just went down here,” you inform him. You slip your shades back on and nod at him.

Thank sweet baby jegus your shades aren’t broken, or that would’ve looked a lot less cool.

“Uh, do you want to maybe- take care of that?” Karkat gestures at you vaguely.

“Take care of what?”

“You’re losing blood. It looks kind of fast too. Or at least it’s fast in comparison to a troll, I haven’t exactly seen enough bleeding humans to form a baseline.”

Your hand went to your nose and came back with blood.

“Well, fuck it all, doctor. Tell me, how long do I have to live?”

He rolls his eyes.

“You’re not going to die from that.”

“But what’s the point of living if I can’t be beautiful?”

He barks a laugh, though you highly doubt there’s a troll Howl’s Moving Castle.

“Then you should be dead a million times over, you narcissistic tool.”

You take maybe a second too long in making a brilliant comeback.

He looks at you then smacks his palm to his face.

“Oh god,” he says, dragging his hand down slowly. “I am the biggest moron, it is me.”

Your first instinct is to reply with a ‘could have told you that’ or an ‘old news bro, where you been, living under a rock or on one’. Instead you just sort of nod.

Karkat hesitates, chews his lip. You can almost see the grey capslock mental debate between ‘yes do it’ Karkat and ‘fuck you no’ Karkat.

He shakes his head like a wet dog and grabs your wrist.

“Come on then. Your problems aren’t going to sort themselves out and neither are mine and _fuck_ if I ever go to Rose Lalonde to talk about this shit.”

He’s stompy and he doesn’t look at you and his hand is hot around your wrist. He pulls you to the heap of trashed computers and lab equipment thrown in a corner.

“Woah man,” you say and dig in your heels. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but I have these things called standards which means I am not desperate enough to do the sex that I’m doing to stick my artistic masterpiece-worthy glutes in a bunch of sharp pointy metal and glass for you.”

Karkat looks torn between laughing and looking disgusted and then error-screened.

He settles on serious and well shit, that’s his rant face.

“Okay, _first_. _Ew_. I would eat the fur off of Equius’ musclebeast lusus before I did anything with your weird, ugly human bulge.”

“Gee thanks Karkat. Much flatter. Wow.”

“ _Second_. If you keep calling it ‘the sex’, I _guarantee_ that you won’t be pailed by anyone but an Ampora for the next three hundred perigees. At least.”

“Which one is Ampora again and have I even met him slash her slash it?” you interrupt.

“Sure you did. The dreambubble one is the seadweller douche with the zigzag horns and the unlit hallucinogenic leaf stick. Stupid hair, talks like a tool, would jump the pail with anything that walks on two legs.”

“I’m no Bill Nye but I’m pretty sure the stuff they put in cigarettes isn’t hallucinogenic.”

“ _Whatever_ , and stop distracting me you humongous ass. _Third_ , I wasn’t going to make you lacerate your squishy, pasty monkey butt on the pile. I have pillows in my sylladex.”

And to prove the point, he decaptchalogues a bunch of fluffy pillows and a couple of blankets. They land on top of the mini junkyard and he drops your wrist like it was hot.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” he mumbles. “I mean, this was a pretty stupid idea. Human don’t even have quadrants, right? Past me looks like a bigger idiot with every passing moment, now that I mention it. In fact, forget it. Haha, just Karkat being weird again, nothing new, move along.”

You grab the back of his head.

“Wait up,” you push him forward. He stumbles and lets himself half-fall onto the pile. “I’m cool with the slumber party. Bring on the popcorn and hair braiding and gossip. We can talk about the new sub teacher’s rack and watch chick flicks until the sun goes down. Except maybe not watch actual chick flicks because that’s not my thing and I did not mean that literally. Also, I do not have popcorn on me, so if you came here to talk and eat popcorn, we’re all out of popcorn.”

“Dave, shut up and sit down.”

You do, and _fuckinghellshit_ maybe you shouldn’t have flopped onto the pile because the edges were still hella pointy through the blankets.

You both stare at lab walls until it becomes a little awkward.

“So,” you start. “Dreambubbles.”

“Fuck dreambubbles,” he replies.

You nod.

“Not that I don’t agree with you, because I do, but any particular reason or are we just fucking them generally?”

He huffs a breath that could have been a laugh.

“Met a dead godtier me who had the gallrotting rumble spheres to say I fucked up bad.”

“Ah,” you say.

“Not that I’m saying I didn’t fuck up, because I’ll admit it, I did. Still, I didn’t need to hear it from _him_. Also…” he trails off, pretends to be distracted by a square edge of something sticking up under the blanket, kicks at it.

“I don’t like thinking about it,” he finishes abruptly.

“Dying or fucking up.”

“Both. But mostly fucking up.”

And that’s the truth: Knights die.

Mostly you die because you choose, and lots of times you die because you didn’t know better, and sometimes you die because wrong place, wrong time, and the universe just has it out for you.

There are a hundred million failed time loops and timelines, where you didn’t die but you might as well have because you didn’t make a difference to the people whose existence mattered and so _what the fucking hell use are you_.

There are a hundred thousand dead Daves from where you didn’t— _couldn’t_ —save Rose or Jade or John or Bro

Oh wait fuck that’s this timeline, haha.

(You fucked up. Bro’s _dead_. Dead for real, no do-overs, this is not a drill.)

Karkat elbows you in the ribs. Hard.

“Ow.”

“Talk to me, you dumb shit. This thing is supposed to go both ways.”

Your turn to find the lumpy computer bits suddenly fascinating.

Karkat half-headbutts you.

“Ow,” you monotone. “Stop with the abuse already. I mean, there is etiquette for this kind of kink. Do you even know my safeword— _ow_.”

“Humans are so goddamn soft,” Karkat grumbles. He nudges you shoulder against shoulder and he’s heavier than he looks. Your abs strain but you still go fwoosh into a pillow.

“Your turn,” he says, and the back of his hand taps against your side for a moment. (Since when has Karkat been this touchy-feely, you’ve never seen any of the trolls this touchy-feely.)

You look up at the fake cardboard lowered panel ceiling thing, and it’s slightly broken and you can see cables and metal and burnt-out lighting fixtures. The lab is cold, and the metal and plastic collection of corners underneath the thin blanket is cold too.

Karkat leans back on the pile next to you.

“Have you ever thought,” you say, and then you have to stop because in the dark of the lab, the LED glow of greens and blues are surreal enough that if you don’t say something it might not become real.

He moves so his shoulder just brushes yours. He’s fever-warm and very real.

“Have you ever thought,” you repeat. “That maybe this is all there is? Maybe this is the best possible timeline and we all fail anyway, welp, game over, no you may not insert another quarter, please collect your shitty consolation prize on the way out.”

Karkat didn’t answer and you remember a heartbeat too late that Karkat’s lost people in the main timeline too.

(There were twelve of them, and so he’s lost one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight… you didn’t even _have_ eight people to give yourself to, you can’t imagine losing people who matter eight times over and still being able to carry on fighting. You wouldn’t be able to. You’d die.)

Karkat takes a breath and it’s loud, and you remember to breathe too.

“Yeah,” he says, quiet and voice sounding more strained than usual. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But… I. I’m already doing everything I can.”

He didn’t say any more and you feel like the biggest douche in all the universes.

“Well, that was depressing,” you say to the ceiling and he snorts.

“What, did you think my dayterrors were filled with sugargrubs and snowflakes? Of course anything I’d have to say about them would become depressing, they’re called dayterrors for a reason.”

He sighs a tiny, resigned sigh that catches you tight in your chest and hurts. You have the sudden urge to lock his head in the crook of your elbow and rest your chin on his head, like Bro used to do when he got back from his jobs.

You do that.

He struggles a bit, then digs his pointy chin into your collar bone and hugs you fiercely.

“None of us will have to die alone,” you say, and it’s a promise.

“Yeah,” he says, swallows. His voice breaks. “Thanks.”

And then his hands go up over his face and he’s crying into your godtier shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says between muffled wracks of sobbing, when he catches shaky breaths. “I’m sorry. Sorry.”

He doesn’t say why or what he’s sorry for and he cries some more because he knows you get it and that’s why you’re not asking.

You just sort of hold him roughly round the shoulders and you’re stupidly grateful that _someone_ is crying. Everything sucks enough that people _should_ be crying, but everyone’s pussyfooting around Admitting It, and you sure as hell weren’t going to be the one to break the ice of _that_ berg.

(You can’t bring yourself to cry, can’t mourn—don’t dare. You are a Strider, and Striders didn’t cry but dear god do you want to break.)

(Karkat breaks in your stead.)

After a while—seventeen long minutes which felt more like seventy-two— the gasps between quiet, violent crying even out to steady breathing.

“Hey,” you say, checking that he hasn’t fallen asleep on you.

Your godtier shirt is damp and sticky against your chest. You were surprisingly okay with that.

“Hey,” Karkat replies. He pulls away and grimaces at you. “Sorry. I can wash your shirt.”

“It’s kay, I can take it off and it won’t kill me or you, unless you start foaming at the mouth from seeing this trademark hot bod, because then you’re probably screwed. There is no cure for fangirling over a Strider, you’d be a lost cause.”

He rolls his eyes, the yellow gleaming eerily in the low light.

“You want to know what a lost cause is? The verbal equivalent to sewage spewing from your facegash is a lost cause. If your lips were a water containment device the gravity of this godforsaken rock would be woefully inadequate to hold the liquid rubbish you produce. The vacuum of space would be flooded and all of us would drown in the most retarded deaths ever to grace all of paradox history.”

“Alright, all I got from that was blahblah slightly gross metaphorical insult and something about my lips. Are you trying to say my lips are attractive, Vantas?”

You duckface at him.

He arches an eyebrow.

“I am trying to say that it is a stupid idea to have wet clothes or no clothes in this giant thermal hull, so let’s remove our collective asses from this cold as fuck laboratory.”

“My room’s warm,” you offer without thinking, and then your brain catches up with your mouth. “Just saying,” you tag hastily.

Karkat fidgets with his hands.

“Yeah,” he says after the longest six seconds ever. “Sure. Let’s go. I’ll set the transportaliser.”

===/\===

You lend him a shirt and he protests but wears it anyway. You look up at the ceiling and he’s looking at the wall on your other side. His hand rests lightly, cautiously on your bare stomach, fingers curled in loosely.

You feel like you’re five and it’s a cool night and the stars are out and a crescent moon smiles at you. You can almost see Bro lying on the floor of your shitty apartment that stinks of steel and sweat and stale Chinese takeout. It’s home and it’s safe and you didn’t think about things like failure and its price.

Karkat turns his head and presses a ninja kiss to your stomach, higher up where your ribcage leaves a little hollow that moves with your beating heart, so quick you could have missed it. He ducks his head and curls up tighter, head half on you and heavy as fuck, but the weight is familiar and strange and comforting all at the same time.

If you dreamt that night you don’t remember it.

 


End file.
